


Time of Death

by The_Exile



Category: Star Ocean: The Second Story | Second Evolution
Genre: F/M, Trauma, post-game dungeons, time stop magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27618130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Ashton and Celine now live together and are coping with Ashton's traumatic response to various adventuring campaigns gone wrong, the biggest one involving time stop magic.
Relationships: Celine Jules/Ashton Anchors
Collections: Froday Flash Fiction Little & Monthly Specials 2020





	Time of Death

**Author's Note:**

> fill for fffc November bingo card 4 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine episodes', square 'ticking clocks'

Discreetly and over time, Ashton had removed all the clocks from their house. He no longer felt comfortable looking at their faces or hearing their inexorable ticking that became a deafening thud at night, when the house otherwise fell silent. If Celine had noticed all their timepieces going missing, sometimes identical ones ending up on the marketplace the next day, she said nothing. Any decent mage could cast a timekeeping spell and besides, the Temple of Tria had a big clock on the steeple. 

She'd been through the same thing as he had. She probably understood, he reasoned. If not his almost lifelong anxiety around time pressure, especially any kind of situation with a visible timer ticking down (most adventurers ended up associating these with pain and death), then his more severe phobia caused by his experiences in the Labyrinth of Trials.

The ability to stop time was the most advanced and dangerous magic there was, unheard of in monsters outside legends and highly controlled by both the Heraldic Laboratory of Lacour and the more traditional magical tribes of Mars. The most dangerous thing about it was the lack of ways to counter it. Ordinary Dispel magic didn't work. The one time they'd encountered it, Ashton and his party had only survived because the wildly unpredictable spell had fizzled out, allowing Rena to throw down a Veda Idol a split second before the spell came back up again. 

There could be worse long-term consequences to having your time stream disrupted, Leon had warned. None of the symptoms had shown up yet but that might be because the whole planet was still reeling from the effects of being thrown back in time to prevent its destruction. 

There were things Ashton, just a normal adventurer, didn't want to think about any more, so he hid the clocks and tried not to look upwards when he prayed to Tria for his soul's deliverance.


End file.
